Monday, May 19
Saturday, May 17
Pecksniffs Of Providence
Part of this disdain usually stems from certain misunderstandings as to the nature of the Christian religion.
One common complaint often arises when Christians in media are required to present and disseminate information regarding less than pleasant realities or discuss the implications of said events and ideas.
Christians in mass communications, as a result, are accused of fostering a negative tone. They are then admonished to take a "distinctively Christian approach to the news" or "work to supply ... a uniquely Christian news flow."
Usually this means either mimicking the spin taken by more traditional secular news sources or confining one's coverage to more acceptable religious fair such as bakesales, choir robes, and sermons so inoffensive in nature as to be devoid of any real theological content.
Employing such a standard, the Bible itself would have to be tossed out with the other offending publications.
John 8:32 says, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Biblical figures did not embrace this notion in some abstract sense without any bearing on everyday life.
The prophet Nathan did not hide behind the false distinction between the public and private lives of government officials when criticizing King David's shortcomings with Bathsheba. Paul did not back down from the Athenians on the Acropolis or the Jews on the Sanhedrin.
It may come as surprise, but not all criticism of rigorous Christian and Conservative media stems from the leftwing of the theological and ideological spectrum. A great deal is in fact generated by those classifying themselves as Fundamentalists.
Even though he does not usually address issues considered distinctively religious in nature, Rush Limbaugh's social and political philosophies are close enough to those regularly found among civically engaged Evangelicals that many of the criticisms leveled against this particular radio personality by Fundamentalist researcher David Cloud in his O'Timothy magazine and website readily apply to Christian mass communicators who address issues of the day in their publications and broadcasts.
David Cloud argues that Rush Limbaugh is in violation of Scripture by disrespecting and stirring up discontent against divinely appointed rulers.
In support of his case, Cloud quotes verses such as Titus 3:1-2 among others which says, "Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work. To speak evil of no man..." As well as from I Peter 2:13 which says, "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake; whether it be the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for punishment of evildoers."
To utilize these verses in condemnation of Conservative media is to misunderstand the nature of the current American political system.
Those opposed to Christian social and political engagement often point out that these passages were written at the time of the Roman Empire. But in all due respect, what of it?
The United States is a completely different political animal. In the Roman Empire, power and authority were vested in the Emperor. In the United States, the people have assented to place final authority in the Constitution. The President, members of Congress, judges, and an increasing array of public officials manning the bureaucracy are merely servants under the Constitution and answerable to the American people through the Constitution, a major clause of which guarantees the citizen the right of free speech.
Rush Limbaugh and his fellow conservative media personalities are in no sense undermining authority duly constituted in the American context.
According to Marvin Olasky in Telling the Truth: How to Revitalize Christian Journalism, such writers are practicing a craft that can be traced in this country back to the days of the Puritan forefathers.
One early American commentator steeped in the Judeo-Christian worldview Olasky quotes sounds strikingly similar to one of the many cogent conservative voices one might find along the radio dial or on the editorial page in our own day. William Leggett wrote in the New York Evening Post during the 1830's regarding government redistribution schemes, "A government administered on such a policy may be called a Government of Equal rights, but it is in its nature and essence a disguised despotism."
It has been said that one ought not unnecessarily discover the sins of others. However, it becomes one's obligation to expose these transgressions when they hit one's pocket book or come to impact the physical and/or moral well-being of one's family or country.
If anything, the actions of mass communicators taking these kinds of stands are more in compliance with the moral order than those taken by government officials who transcend the bounds of their delineated authority in the pursuit of individual aggrandizement or the imposition of freedom-curtailing ideologies.
If Conservative and Evangelical mass communicators are to refrain from criticizing government leaders since to do so would be speaking evil in violation of I Peter 2, then by what right does a pastor have to chastise the shortcomings of the congregation? Like the pastor calling for a return to righteous living, the commentator is simply admonishing wayward officials to return to the principles of just leadership.
Critics of Evangelical cultural involvement have also failed in understanding the multifaceted threat faced by Christianity for the soul of America. David Cloud asserts in the O' Timothy article, "Limbaugh does not understand the root problems with America's ills, which are spiritual and moral rather than political."
The assessment of the nature of the problem is correct, but it fails to account for the fact that the nature of totalitarianism is to infect and smother all areas of existence. Under this system of social organization, those involved with the administration of political affairs take it upon themselves to exert control over those aspects of existence considered more spiritual in nature.
Limbaugh and others like him do not necessarily advocate political answers to nonpolitical problems. What they do insist upon is for political leaders to disentangle themselves from other social spheres and to return to America's founding principles.
David Cloud continues, "The Christian's primary business is to preach the Word of God to the ends of the earth and to be ready for Christ's return." He also adds that what we need are preachers and not radio entertainers.
Such statements reveal the kind of ignorance regarding the nature of Christian and Conservative media and mass communications alluded to earlier. It also exhibits a serious failure in realizing that not everyone is called to promote God's message in the same way.
Ephesians 4:11 says, "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers."
While it is the duty of every Christian to promote the saving message of Jesus in their own way, not everyone is to do it in the same way. Broadcast personalities and print correspondents can address topics and issues not necessarily appropriate coming from behind a pulpit such as the threats posed by terrorism or the intricacies of education policy but that do have bearing on the implications of God's will for man in the world.
Even though Christ's return is imminent in that it can occur at any time, there is a world to occupy and evil to hold at bay in the meantime. Certain Christians excuse their social quietism on the grounds that prophecy predicts conditions will grow increasingly more evil. Did they ever stop to think such foretold apostasy was the result of Evangelicals abandoning the culture willy-nilly to the forces of the adversary without a fight?
This self-imposed dichotomy between the sacred and the profane advocated by certain brands of fundamentalism was not the position taken by the Protestant Reformers who saw all of creation and culture as part of God's handiwork to be enjoyed by His children.
Therefore, all labor undertaken in His honor was to be as equally important. Be it as a farmer behind the plow or as a preacher in the pulpit. Somewhere along this spectrum there must be room for Christian commentators, broadcasters, and journalists who look to both the concrete realities of this earthly life as well as to the eternal principles by which the affairs of the universe are governed.
by Frederick Meekins
Friday, May 16
Obama Administration Denies Entrance To Nigerian Christian Victimized By Jihadists
Thursday, May 15
Italian Bishop Calls For The Acceptance Of Homosexuality, Abortion & Euthanasia
Lessons In Apologetics #8: Atheism
Atheism is the worldview that believes that God does not exist. Those embracing this perspective tend to do so over both objective and existential reasons.
Those claiming to embrace Atheism for objective reasons often concentrate their attacks on the more scientific approaches to the existence of God such as the cosmological argument. The cosmological argument for the existence of God holds that all contingent things must have a cause and that this cause is at the minimum Aristotle’s Uncaused Cause and preferably the God of the Christian faith as expounded by Aquinas when he adapted these propositions for Christian usage. Atheists raise their hands and say hold on a moment to what they see as presumptuous conclusions.
From the Christian perspective, since God exists beyond what we perceive as time, He is sufficient or necessary to jumpstart the universe and get the temporal ball rolling. However, the Atheist has no metaphysical problem with an infinite chain of causality. Yet the laws of thermodynamics might dictate otherwise as these fundamental principles of physics hold that there is only a finite amount of energy available within a closed system.
So even though the Atheist may not have an intellectual objection to a material universe that is infinitely old, such an assumption smashes eventually against the hard wall of reality. However, seldom has that ever stopped anyone adamant about adhering to their favored delusions no matter what the evidence might say.
The next set of arguments for Atheism against belief in God center around a set of moral objections. All must confess these have crossed our minds at low points in each of our lives.
The most objective of these centers around the nature of goodness and God's relationship to it. This argument was developed by Bertrand Russell (218).
The moral disproof for God states that good must result because either God decrees it or He does not. If good is good simply because God says it is and no one can argue against Him since He is the biggest guy on the cosmic block, good is not really good since God has willed it so arbitrarily. However, if God declares something good because of its own inherent nature or compliance with a standard beyond Himself, doesn't that mean that the standard rather than God is ultimate? Thus, at best, God ends up being demoted to the status of Plato's less than omnipotent demiurge.
Geisler counters, though, that this is really putting the ethical cart before the theistic horse. Geisler writes, "Rather than flowing from God's arbitrary will, the moral law may be seen as rooted in God's unchangeably good and loving nature, then the apparent dilemma is resolved (226).” Thus, good is something God is rather than something God decides or does. This brings to mind verses such as John 8:58 where God proclaims “Before Abraham was, I am.”
Other moral objections to the existence of God are a bit less ethereal and considerably more visceral and marked by the pain those leveling them have experienced or witnessed living here in an obviously fallen world. One such objection raised by Albert Camus in The Plague uses the backdrop of an epidemic to make the point that theism is inherently anti-humanitarian. The story posits the dichotomy that, if one assists the suffering, one is siding against God by interfering with the work of His judgment, and if one wants to be in His will and not stand in His way, one is therefore opposed to human well being (221).
Other related objections to God over the problem of evil dismiss His existence all together. A number of Atheists deny the existence of God on the grounds that, because people often suffer disproportionately to what they have done wrong, an all powerful and all good God does not exist. It is argued a God possessing these attributes would not allow evil. But because evil is rampant, that is proof that either God is not all powerful and cannot do anything about evil or that He is all powerful but does not do anything about the evil in the world because He is not good enough to care.
Though it is not always a comfort to someone that has befallen an overwhelming tragedy such as the murder of a loved one, the existence of evil does not by default disprove the existence of God. It does, however, toss the apologetic ball into the theist's court to provide a plausible reason as to why an all-powerful and all-good God would allow suffering to exist.
Known as "theodicy", these explanations attempt to reconcile the simultaneous existence of both God and evil. It is at this point that the theist must counter claim that the evil in the world is solvable or redeemable. The Christian especially can point out that God has indeed done something about the evil by sending His only begotten Son into the world to do something about this tragedy in the most personable of ways.
If the Atheist presses this objection too vigorously, the wily apologist ought to turn the argument back on his unbelieving compatriot. To even make the claim that God does not exist, because the world is not as good as we think it would be if He really did, is actually an indirect argument that He really does.
For to argue that things are not good enough is to assume some kind of standard exists beyond the earthly fray we find ourselves in. If this material universe was all there ever was, the highest good we could ever know is what we see around us and we’d be unable to criticize anything as the “is” automatically becomes the “ought” in such a context.
Yet there is a deep dissatisfaction that compels most human souls onward towards a better world. Romans 2:14-15 says, “...when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts..." Secondly, Atheists claiming disbelief in God because, in their view, He has not done enough to stop or prevent suffering in the world often want to have things both ways. These theophobes not only deny God over the imperfections they see in the world but then hypothesize that, if God existed, man would not be free because human freedom would be, as Geisler puts it, "circumscribed by his divine determination (231)."
However, it is because God loves us so much and respects us as individuals that in the vast majority of instances He does not directly interfere with most actions but rather permits their outcome to propel the world onward to His ultimate plan for all of His creation. Geisler writes, "If love is persuasive but never coercive, then allowing men to freely determine their own destiny would seem to be the loving way to make them (231)."
Unfortunately, some are in such a state of rebellion against God that they take this animus out on others. Foremost among such deeds would no doubt rank murder.
Some would respond that, if God really loved the innocent, He would intervene to prevent this crime. However, as C.S. Lewis hypothesizes in The Problem Of Pain, for our own benefit God has created a world that operates in the vast majority of instances by a series of repeatable and verifiable principles.
For example, according to this moral "steady-state theory", I am able to pick up a knife to either slice a steak or slit my neighbor's throat for the purposes of providing man with a rational world where we will not go mad. Faced with such, the Christian must embrace Romans 8:28 as a comfort in a world that often does not seem fair to our finite minds.
By Frederick Meekins
Wednesday, May 14
British School Children Forced To Pray To Allah Under Threat Of Academic Reprisals
Tuesday, May 13
Lessons In Apologetics #7: Panentheism
The next worldview examined by Geisler in "Christian Apologetics" is Panentheism. Whereas Deism postulated a God detached from His creation for the sake of transcendence and Pantheism claims that God and the world are coterminous for the sake of immanence, Panentheism attempts to conceptualize a God that is distinct from yet part of the world.
To the Panentheist, God is to the world what mind or soul is to the body (193). Like many of the worldviews and methodologies already discussed, Panentheism can be traced back to the days of ancient Greece.
Perhaps one of the foremost examples of Panentheism would be the Demiurge of Platonic thought. Whereas the Judeo-Christian God created matter out of nothing, Plato’s Demiurge did not create the world out of nothing but rather shaped and crafted it out of independent eternally existent matter.
Since the matter which coexists with this version of God is just as eternal as God, God does not necessarily have the ultimate say. As such, Panentheism is also known as finite godism or process theology.
According to Alfred North Whitehead, God is bipolar. No, that does not mean God is depressed though you might be if this system posited is the best man can hope for. The theology of bipolarity hypothesizes a God with one end in eternity where His potentiality and the things He hopes to accomplish are located and His other end located in the temporal world where His actuality is manifested but not always to the extent He might intend as His creations possess their own autonomy.
Since the world and those in it are able to exhibit a degree of independence thwarting God’s will and ends, the bipolar theory of God is also a form of process theology or finite godism. According to process theology, God changes over time, must rely on us for the accomplishment of His plans in the world, and cannot assure from eternity past that He will ultimately prevail.
In his analysis of the theory, Geisler writes, "How can anyone worship a god so impotent that he cannot even call the whole thing off? Is not such a god so paralyzed as to be perilous (210)?” If the Christian has no assurance that God will triumph, from the way the world appears to be going, one would be better off hedging one’s bets by siding with the Devil or sitting the whole thing out all together.
by Frederick Meekins
Monday, May 12
Will Transhumanists & Anarchists Form Alliance To Destroy Traditional Morality?
What Freedoms Will Christians Be Duped Into Surrendering In The Name Of The Environment?
Not One Mention Of Islam In Frau Obama's Plea For Release Of Nigerian Schoolgirls
Friday, May 9
Pope Insists Deadbeats More Deserving Of Property Than Those Actually Earning It
Click On The Headline
In a podcast discussion of doctrinal distinctives, a caller remarked that like an oak tree, once you have been planted in the church, you don’t leave. That is until they carry you out after have swigged from the doctored Kool-Aid or carried out on a stretcher following the ATF raid. You leave anytime you feel in your spirit that things aren’t up to snuff.
In a podcast discussion regarding doctrinal distinctives in the church, it was remarked that one should not seek a likeable pastor. That said, neither is one obligated to remain in a church with one where you constantly bash heads or where one feels belittled. If you aren’t careful, Jonestown can result.
Lessons In Apologetics #6: Pantheism
If Deism is the belief that God is so transcendent from the cosmos He created that He no longer participates directly in it, Pantheism must be the worldview at the other end of the continuum believing that a higher power exists as Pantheism holds that God is so immanent with the universe that God and the universe are one. As a worldview, Pantheism has plagued the religious thought of both the East and West from ancient times on up through our contemporary day.
Though there are various forms of Pantheism, most share a set of common characteristics. Pantheists will agree that ultimately there is but one substance.
Parmenides hypothesized that there is either being or nonbeing and in order to exist there must be being. And if everything possesses this quality, everything is of the same substance as to differ by nothing would be not to exist at all.
Though everything is ultimately one under Pantheism, what we perceive as multiplicity or distinction are either manifestations or emanations of the absolute unity.
In the "Enneads", the Greek mystic Plotinus said that from this impersonal unity flowed the various levels of reality starting with unity, then inward into mind, then the world soul, then multiple souls, then to the lowest level of matter. It is man, Geisler writes in "Christian Apologetics" of this brand of Pantheism in as "the microcosm who possesses mind, soul, and matter" that the journey back to unity and oneness begins (175).
Though slightly different, other forms of Pantheism share considerable similarity. For example, in Spinoza's pantheism, God is a substance of infinite attributes and we exist as transient manifestations of the absolute that are eventually reabsorbed back into it. And in Hinduism, though that world religion is noted for its multiplicities of divinities, in its philosophically complex variants, the various gods all the way down to the material components of the physical world are the assorted levels of the comprehensive totality known as Brahman.
Though many Pantheists claim to embrace tolerance as they contend all religions are merely human efforts to understand the same all-encompassing God, one is really taking the serpent to one’s bosom when dealing with Pantheism. For example, in much of Pantheist thought, it is held that both good and evil flow from God much in the same way there is both a light and dark side of the Force in the Star Wars epic. Other Pantheists claim that God is beyond good and evil as understood by human beings.
Such positions could be used to not only justify any number of atrocities but also to view them in a disturbingly detached manner or even positively in an around about fashion. For example, if good and evil are simply just human conceptions useful for ordering social relations, what is so inherently immoral about the Holocaust?
After all, were not the Jews the ones anyway that set the ball rolling on the theism that ended up promoting the conceptual dualism that now hinders the expansion of consciousness? Besides, by liberating them of their physical materiality, aren’t we doing them a favor by reuniting them with universal oneness? Under Pantheism, the “is” becomes the “ought” and that is why one sees cows strutting freely down the streets of India with the baby girls tossed out with the trash.
by Frederick Meekins
Thursday, May 8
Interesting. Licentious progressives demand such uniformity of mindset that those privileged to be spotlighted in the media targeting that particular demographic must not be allowed to formulate streams of cognition contradicting this ethical hegemony even when these reflections are not highlighted in the information such personalities are contracted to convey. For example, HGTV removed from its lineup a new program titled “Flip It Forward” because the Christianity espoused by the hosts of the program opposes gay marriage and abortion. Never mind the fact that it would be Christian beliefs that would motivate an individual to assist the destitute in acquiring shelter. That should teach the hosts a lesson. Perhaps they should just use their skills at carpentry and real estate to accumulate wealth for themselves with those unable to do so allowed to fritter into destitution and ruination in compliance with the Darwinian hypothesis. Yet when there is the possibility that a small segment of the media is at least open to the possibility of allowing for the expression of a broadly traditionalist or theistic perspective in a public format, these very same licentious progressives rampage how this one outlet is suppressing dissent. This is particularly evident in liberal opposition to Fox News. Derangement against that news organizations is so widespread and vehement that some time ago, liberals about pulled their hair out how the network was featured in episodes of 24 (a drama that tends to skewer conservative in terms of its viewership) even though Fox (the network upon which 24 aired) and Fox News are owned by the same company.
In justifying why a pastor must never be seen in a Hawaiin shirt, a fundamentalist Baptist insisted that the world needs to see that we are like God and not the world. So how is such a perspective markedly different than those that insist ministers should wear clerical collars and vestments rather than business suits? Isn’t it that the business suit is the clerical collar and vestment of most hyperlegaistic fundamentalists?
A pastor condemned a fellow minister for making an idol technology because he did not return a phone call after several attempts but replied to a text within 30 seconds of receiving one. What we have here is not so much a sin but rather a difference in personal technological preference. So would condemnation on part of an Amishman or a Luddite of the minister conducting his communications through telephone rather than through written correspondence or perhaps face to face also be valid or would that simply be viewed as fanatic overkill? And what of those that condemned the proliferation of the printing press during the days of the Reformation?
Interesting. In terms of coercing compliance irrespective of whether or not that which being called for is a clearly delineated issue, pastors often emphasize the Hebrews 13:17 calling for obedience of those that rule over you so that their task might be joyful. What about the verse where those in authority (especially parents) are urged not to provoke those under them to wrath?
A number of questionable assumptions were expounded in an elocution on national repentance based upon the Book of Joel posted on SermonAudio.com. For example, for true repentance to come about the pastor insisted that first one was required to first conduct a “fast of the spirit”. Apparently, it is not enough to abstain from that which is merely sin. One must also abstain from those desires that find their origin in the flesh but are otherwise legitimate. So does that mean if your backside itches, you can’t scratch it? Giving up that which one is not required to does not earn brownie points with God. If anything, it merely takes one dangerously closer to works-based righteousness “at best” and at worst might push one over into a proto-gnosticism that denigrates materiality and embodiment. Secondly, this pastor went out of his way to spoof those that prefer to deal with there in the pew any conviction they might be under from the Holy Spirit rather than going forward to make a, shall we say, spectacle of themselves in the front of the church. Instead, in times of judgment, repentance must be made public. So apparently, not only can’t you scratch your own backside, you’ve got to cop before an audience to each time you’ve stolen a glance of someone else's backside Frankly, on what grounds do these variety of Baptists then complain about Roman Catholic ritualism such as confession, unnecessary penance, and bodily mortification?
Transhumanist Conference Ponders The Theological Implications Of The Pending SIngularity
Lessons In Apologetics #5: Deism
The first worldview examined will be Deism. As with Christianity, Deism believes that God created the universe and set it up to operate in accord with a system of natural laws both physical and moral that are discoverable by mankind. What sets Deism apart from Christianity is the extent to which each believes God intervenes in the affairs of both nature and man.
Often, Deism is described as the watchmaker view of God. Those holding to this view believe that, while God created the world and set it into motion, the natural laws He established were so comprehensive that God no longer intervenes in or on His creation’s behalf. This assumption puts it at odds with orthodox Biblical theology on a number of points.
As a system, it could be said that Deism served as a transitional set of beliefs between two great epochs of Western intellectual history. Following the upheaval of religious conflicts such as the Thirty Years War, in a sense Deism was a recoil to the horrors of dogma that had been exorcised of the doctrines of compassion and moderation.
Deism also softened the shock to those wanting to turn their backs on a Biblically-based understanding of life but not yet ready to embrace the rampant secularism characterizing the more recent contemporary era. Deism was also the end product of the scholastic undertakings of the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration whereby European thinkers had to come to grips with the realization that a world, a goodly portion of it consisting of cultures as at least as complex as their's, existed beyond the borders of Christendom.
The Father of English Deism was Herbert of Cherbury. In his book “On Truth“, Herbert established the following principles as common to all men: that there is one supreme God, that he ought to be worshipped, that virtue and piety are the chief parts of worship, that we ought to be sorry for our sins, and that a divine goodness dispenses rewards and punishments both in this life and the hereafter (153).
At a quick glance, the list does not appear all that controversial and there is not much there the orthodox Christian would disagree with. However, it is what is not on the list that Deists following after Herbert of Cherbury expanded upon that brought this worldview's anti-Christian underpinnings to full fruition for all the world to see.
One thinker that most have at least a cursory knowledge of connected to Deism was John Locke. According to Geisler, Locke in “The Reasonableness Of Christianity” endorsed the Deist unitarian view of God and denied the deity of Christ.
Among early Deists, the average Christian would really have to be on their toes to detect the subtle attacks against the faith. Often then the attacks were carefully aimed at other religious systems rather than directly on the Bible itself. However, as society became more accepting as to the amount of dissent that could be openly expressed, a number of Deists more bluntly stated their antagonisms with varying degrees of success.
For example, Matthew Tindal in “Christianity As Old As Creation” argued that, since God is perfect by definition, the revelation of God in the created order is so complete that the idea of the Bible is superfluous and is actually inferior as Tindal considered the Bible to be full of errors anyway (160). And by the time of the founding of the United States of America and the early years of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson edited a version of the Bible exorcising the Scriptures of their miraculous content. Our third president ended the Gospel with “there laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone in front of the sepulcher and departed”, thus causing this version of the good news not to be all that good as Jesus had not risen according to this act of censorship (165).
Source: Geisler, Norman. "Christian Apologetics". Baker Academic, 1988.
by Frederick Meekins
Wednesday, May 7
Emergent Church Propagandists Insist Life After Death An "Unbiblical Concept"
But why are those that work at regular jobs obligated to support these beatniks.
They also badmouth the notion of self preservation and defense.
That means when Jim Jones passes the Koolaid, you are obligated to slurp it down.
Click On The Headline